


I Don't Think That's How It Works

by TheDogSays



Series: Fell In Summer [2]
Category: Major Crimes (TV)
Genre: 'Cause its hella cute, And good., Angst, Consent, Explicit Consent, Kissing, Long Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Skype, Summer Time Sadness, really really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2130747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDogSays/pseuds/TheDogSays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There were days that it felt like any laying of hands on his body could disassemble him. When Josh cupped his chin and kissed him Rusty thought he might fly apart. But in a good way. He was slow and careful and sure of himself. And Rusty wondered what that felt like, being sure of something. Anything."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Think That's How It Works

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion fic to "You Owe Me", which is part one of this series.  
> I guess you could read it as a stand alone. But IDK, it might make more sense if you read the other one first.

 

Josh Fine was older than Rusty by a year.

They met in AP lit.

Rusty had been sitting there staring at the head of the person in front of him for nearly a month but had never actually talked to it. It had dark dark  hair that curled at the ears. But then the teacher told them to pair up for their next project, a report on Animal Farm. The rest of the class hemmed and moaned.

And that head with the nice hair turned around and said, “Have you read it? It’s totally wild, and about like, freedom, and equality of men and stuff. Way better than Catcher in the Rye. Wanna work together?” Beneath the nice hair there were big gray eyes and a bow shaped mouth.  He offered his hand to Rusty.

The mouth said, “Hi. Sorry. I’m Josh. Nice to meet you.”

Even with the zit high up on his forehead, and the ugly school uniform, he was still the most beautiful boy Rusty had ever seen. And he could only nod and shake the proffered hand with a sweaty palm.

The next day, Rusty received his first letter from Phillip Stroh

They got an A on their Animal Farm report.

And that was the beginning.

It was slow at first. So slow that it was confusing. Sometimes he and Josh sat together during lunch. Worked together on few class projects after that. Snuck into the library during mass because Josh was jewish and Rusty just could. Not. Take. Any. More.

They started “hanging out” after school, a concept that was new to him. Rusty tried to teach Josh how to play chess. He let Josh win at chess. Josh, in return, made him playlists, pushed books on him by people named Ginsberg and Vonnegutt, and helped him with his english homework. So they’d did that for, like, months. Back and forth. Talking. Staring at his ears. Josh always sat so near him when they were together. And he liked to talk close and conspiratorally, leaning in so Rusty could sometimes feel his breath, and smell his shampoo. And then nothing would happen. Nothing ever happened.

And he thought he knew how this worked. He thought he knew how to do this.

The letters are sporadic in their delivery. Sometimes the gaps are so long that Rusty can let himself believe that they’ve stopped. But then another comes. He keeps them arranged by date but can’t seen any real pattern to it.

Just before winter break Josh comes over to the condo to study for a final. And right in the middle of quizzing one another on the civil war, Rusty gets fed up and announces, “Custer was an asshole. I want to kiss you.”

Josh laughs. And for a moment Rusty wants to die.

“Well it took you long enough,” Josh said, and gently took the textbook from Rusty’s hands.

Rusty had thought that it would be scary. Being with someone after, well. There were days that it felt like any laying of hands on his body could disassemble him. And when Josh cupped his chin and kissed him Rusty thought he might fly apart. But in a good way. Josh was slow and careful and sure of himself. And Rusty wondered what that felt like, being sure of something. Anything.

They’d spent the rest of that evening not learning about the civil war and making out on the floor in front of the sofa. Sharon’s sofa. In Sharon’s living room. And they’d been doing that basically ever since.

The whole next semester was pretty much all about kissing. Kissing every place and every spare moment. But nothing more. And ok, fine, sometimes there were knees wedged between thighs and fucking up against one another. Sometimes there were even hands up under the hems of t-shirts. But that was it.

Rusty started to wonder if maybe he was doing something wrong.

“Have you done it before?” he asked quietly, in the library one afternoon

Josh huffed out a laugh, earning them a harsh look from the librarian. “Um... yeah,” he whispered. “Yes. Not a lot. But, like, you know.”

Rusty did not know

Josh got into a fight at school. Or, more accurately, Josh lost a fight. He was suspended and no one would tell Rusty what had happened. When he came back three days later there was a fading bruise over his eye and a split in his lip that would have been healing better if Josh would just stop tonguing it. Rusty offered to drive Josh home from school that day.

“So?”

“So, I was defending your honor,” said Josh, with a wry grin. “Greg, from my trig class. He called you a... It doesn't matter. He's an asshole anyway.”

“Does he looks worse?”

“Nope. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

At the next red light, Rusty had to ask. "He said I was a whore, right?"

Josh set his jaw in a hard line. "He's a liar. And a son of a bitch. So it doesn't matter what he--"

"But it does," said Rusty.

"What?"

Rusty never cried when he told his story to the cops. But in that moment he feared that he might and kept his head down, eyes focused on the road. 

“Rusty?”

The light changes. He pulls slowly through the intersection.

"What are you talking about?" Josh asked, voice breaking in a building panic.

And it all just flooded away from him in a torrential sort of way. Everything. He told Josh everything. For real this time. More than he’d told the cops or even Sharon. He told him about his mom. Her boyfriends. The things they’d made him do. How he’d gone on to do those things with other men for money. He was messed up. He had scars, both literal and figurative. And that was why he didn’t talk about his family or take his shirt off in front of Josh ever. Because he was what they said he was. Had been. Was.

And by the time he's done, they're pulling up in front of Josh's Mom's house

He thinks its good timing, 'cause he kind of expects Josh to get out and storm off. Rusty’d done this so many times now, he could usually anticipate what sort of reactions his story would garner. He’d learned those words at school. Anticipate; regard as probable; expect or predict. Garner; gather or collect (something, esp. information or approval). But he couldn’t really have anticipated the way Josh clutched at him, pulling Rusty into a crushing hug.

There were tears streaming down his cheeks. Other cars passed. A dog walker slowed down to look at them through the window. The engine tick tick ticked as it cooled. And finally Josh took a steadying breath.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked.

For them to break up they'd have to be dating. Josh would have to be his boyfriend. But Rusty thought that was such a stupid sounding word. Anyway, they'd never really talked about it. Not like that.

“If it’s too weird,” said Rusty, “and you don’t want to do this anymore I would get it.

“That’s not what I asked. ”

“No.” Rusty pushed his fingers through Josh’s thick black curls. “I don’t want to break up.” The words felt clunky in his mouth. Immature. Out of character. But that didn’t make them less true.

“I hate that that happened to you,” Josh sniffed. “And I swear, I’d get in, like, a billion fist fights if someone ever tried to hurt you like that--”

“You mean you’d lose a billion fights.”

Josh kissed him, soft, right between the eyes. “Yeah, probably.”

They’re together almost all the time, after that. And if they’re not together together they find other ways.

For a while, Rusty carries the letters around with him. It feels wrong hiding them in Sharon's apartment. He hates lying to her. And for some reason keeping them in the bottom of his backpack feels like a smaller infraction. But it’s not long before there are too many. He runs out of room for his laptop and books and homework. So he stashes them in the cabinet of his small cubicle in the bull pen. He half hopes that someone will notice. But no one does.

“So when am I going to meet your new friend,” Sharon says, one evening. They’re eating takeout again. Not that Rusty is complaining.

“What friend?” he said.

“You haven’t so much as looked up from that phone in hours,” she said, snatching it from his fingers. A terrified part of him thought she might look to see who he was furiously texting. But instead she shut the device down and shoved it away down the table. “So, are you going to tell me about them.”

“Really,” Rusty insisted. “It’s no one.”

Josh is really bad at chess.

But still, when Sharon was out he would come over and they would lay on the floor with the board between them. He could tell that Josh’s interest was feigned. But it was still fun so they kept playing. And he was explaining, for maybe the 17th time, exactly why you couldn't move a knight that way when Josh crawled around the board to Rusty’s side.

This was becoming a part of the game. House rules: Josh would lay beside him, still and not touching. And he would wait. Sometimes it took only a few seconds. And sometimes it took minutes, ten or fifteen, once a whole twenty minutes. Rusty liked that he could make Josh wait.

Then Rusty would sigh and nod his approval.  

At that, Josh shoved up the hem of his shirt and set to worrying a hickey into Rusty’s shoulder, just shy of the base of his neck, just beside the space where he knew there was a pale pink cigarette burn.

Rusty bit back on a noise that seemed to build up somewhere in the shallows of his chest. They’d been getting braver, more daring together. And he was only just learning to like this again. Or maybe not again. Maybe for the first time. He shivered when Josh trailed his fingers up Rusty’s spine.

“You know,” said Josh, “before, I thought you were a virgin.”

Rusty’d thought the same of him, at first. But in actuality, he’d “lost it” to a girlfriend in freshman year. And then a college boy he met at a coffee shop in Portland the summer after his parents split up. He counted them as separate events. And he used that word when talking about it. Lost. Like something left on a bus or disappeared in the laundry.

Rusty couldn't remember his first time.

And Josh coaxed Rusty onto his back, mouthing dangerously low, at the top of his jeans, up to the cage of his ribs.

"I think it's the blonde, blue eyed thing. You just look so... good. Like you could do no wrong." 

And god, he wished Josh would kiss his nipples. Because a client had done that once. And he'd liked it. Liked it a lot. But he doesn't know how the fuck to ask. Because he's pretty sure it's fucked up and weird to ask your boyfriend to do that thing that the dad from Texas did in that hotel room that one time.

Josh sucked on his neck-- "It's a stupid phrase, but you really could do no wrong. You're really good." --and Rusty let out an embarrassed whine. He threw an arm over his eyes.

“God. Sorry. I don’t mean... I, um... I don’t know what I meant,” said Josh. “I’m sorry. I should just stop taking for the rest of my life.”

"No, It's ok."

All the people he had been with, first, last, whichever, they’d all been so fond their cliches. He supposed that was why they were fond of him, too. They’d liked to call him baby. Or son. Or boy. Or good. Or bad. Or dirty. Or some combination there of. But Josh saw him as a blank slate. And he said Um a lot when he was nervous which was, for some reason, kind of cute.

Rusty plucked the knight off the chess board and turned it over over and over in his fingers.  

“Are  you going to fuck me?” he asked.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Rusty snorted. “Oh really?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s like, a mutual thing,” he said. “The question you should be asking is ‘Would you fuck me? ‘Cause I’d like that.’ I mean, if that is the case...”

Rusty groaned and hid his face behind his hands.

“And then I would be, like, ‘Yeah, that’s a totes great idea.’ or ‘No.’ or, or!” said Josh, “‘What if we did it the other way around. And you fucked me?'”

“Ok, I get it. Stop. God.”

“No, you have to actually answer.”

Rusty thought he’d stopped blushing about sex a long time ago. But his chest and cheeks felt suddenly hot. “I didn’t mean now...”

“Well neither did I.”

“Sharon will be home soon. So yeah...”

“Yeah.”

Summer rolled in. Rusty started classes and Josh got shipped to Portland to visit his dad, The Military Engineer who’d recently aquired a new wife and stepdaughter.

Josh was an only child. Had grown up moving around alot. Kind of like Rusty but mostly not. And kind of like Rusty, he had a hard time making friends and was dreading the summer alone.

“So you’ve gotta skype me everyday. Face time. gChat, whatever,” he demanded. “Every. Day.”

“Everyday,” Rusty agreed.

And so he got acquainted with his webcam. And face time. And he liked looking at Josh’s face only a little more than he’d liked looking at his ears. He liked looking at Josh in cloths that were not his school uniform. He liked Josh in coffee shops, busses, art museums, alleys with cool graffiti, and his bedroom. Mostly his bedroom.

Also, he started really looking at himself. Because so much had changed.

Rusty’s face was fuller. Which meant that it had once been gaunt and he hadn’t even noticed. His chin and cheeks were more defined. More grown up. Or so he liked to think. And his hair was clean and healthy, something he enjoyed more than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t so much how it looked but the way it felt on his face. The way it felt when when Josh was pushing it away from his face.

Josh asks if he can “watch” him on cam.

“Watch what?” Rusty asks.

“You know,” he says. “We could do it together. Just think about it.”

And he does. And he takes his time doing it to. Rusty isn’t sure why he plays it out so long. Because just the thought of it leaves his head swimming and his cheeks hot. He thinks it might be because he likes having the choice. And that’s fucked up. And morbid. But fuck it. He waits a few days. And Josh doesn’t push. And that alone makes his stomach do flips and he wants to do it even more.

So he just sends Josh a text that says “YES OK”, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.

They have to wait until the next day when Josh is alone in his dad’s condo and Rusty has the apartment to himself. He spends a lot of time making sure that the angle is just right; the laptop at the head of the bed, at the foot of the bed, and finally on a chair, on a stack of books at the bottom left corner of the bed. He makes the bed and then purposefully rumples it, checks the lighting with the blinds open and then closed and then half open.

He combs his hair a dozen times and tries on three different shirts.

In the end the set up is all for naught. The first thing Josh says, “Why are you so far away? I can’t hear you.”

So Rusty brings the laptop back into bed with him. Neither of them know what they’re doing, but it’s all the better for it. Josh goes first, undressing slowly, mostly out of nervousness. But it’s still quite a show; the exposure of his broad shoulders and tan lines and chest, the sprinkling of hair down low on his belly, the curve of his hips and his cock and his tense thighs as he sits back on his heels in his own bed hundreds of miles away. It’s not trying to be sexy or showy but it’s for Rusty and that makes it inherently so.

Rusty pulled off his shirt in one slow fluid motion. And he was nervous. But he wasn't sure why.

He'd had a sort of routine for undressing in front of clients. But he thought strip tease was a stupid term. And he'd come up with this whole slew of stupid cliche lines, too. And he'd practiced doing them, all the right moves and right words, over and over. Cause it was a those little touches that got you big tips and return customers.

He turned coyly to the side, teasing his jeans off his hips.

Josh leaned in close to the screen and says, “Fuck I want to kiss you right now.”

“Kiss me where?” Rusty asks and Josh turns a furious shade of pink. Before he can stop himself, Rusty asks, “How do you want me?”

And Josh shakes his curls down over his eyes. “I don’t care. I just want to see your face.”

Rusty’s chest tightened. “Ok. Yeah, I just... Just a sec."

He covered his face with his hands and took a few hard breaths.

"You know you're really beautiful, right?" Josh said, his voice far away and broken up a little over the distance.

Rusty laughed. "I don't think... I'm not taking off my underwear," he said.

And Josh just smiled. "Ok. Do you want me to--"

"No, I like seeing you. I just..."

They're mostly quiet through the rest. They don't use words, anyway. It’s all too silly and dirty and all at once tender to talk through.

The rest of the summer is fuzzy with hyperbole and feelings and mutual masterbation and web cams.

And it’s so great and normal and good and fun that he forgets to be afraid. The letters continue to come. But he doesn't care. He doesn't even bother reading them any more. He just hides them away.

After a while he's more worried about someone finding out about Josh than he is about the letters. And when Buzz catches Rusty talking with him on skype he literally want's to die.

Buzz swears that he won't tell. And Rusty mostly trusts him.

And as the summer starts to wind down he and Josh start having stupid conversations about things like senior year and graduation and going to the same college and getting an apartment together. Josh parents want him to go to school near home, near one of their homes. But Josh has his heart set on Boston U because they have a great creative writing program. He knows it’s stupid but it’s what he thinks he wants to do.

Rusty doesn't have a fucking clue what he’ll do after graduation. And he seriously doubts that he could ever get into a school like that. But he does silently admit to himself that he would follow. He would go with Josh wherever he wanted.

They talk about having sex. Like, real in person sex.

When he was living on the street there was this one chick, Tig, a scrappy dyke-y looking girl who would come down to Santa Monica and pass out condoms to the kids who worked there. And she would always hound them to go and get tested at the free clinic where she worked.

He'd thought she was annoying and know it all. And one day he'd snapped at her, "Why the fuck do you care if we get sick?"

She'd just shrugged at him, unphased. "Well maybe I shouldn't. But don't you? I mean, what if you got something and gave it to someone?"

And he'd sneered right back. "They probably deserve it."

"But what if," she said, "someday, it's someone you care about?"

He was down at the free clinic, like clockwork, every two weeks after that.

Or he had been, until he came to live with Sharon.

And he goes to Buzz because there's not really anyone else, and anyway he already knows Rusty's other big secret.

And if he's honest, Rusty never really understood exactly what function Buzz served in Major Crimes. Like, he didn't carry a gun or arrest people. And Rusty just didn't see the point of him being there. But he came through for Rusty. And he finds a sort of respect in that.

Rusty’s actually excited to go back to school. He dreads the uniform. But classes give him a sense of purpose, something to focus on that is not Stroh or the impending trial. And Josh will be there.

He’s five feet inside the building, on the very first day, when someone grabs Rusty by the back of his shirt, dragging him down a hall, around a corner and into a bathroom.

“What the fuck?”

Josh, grinning, crowded him into an empty stall and kissed him, hard and clumsy. “Hi. I missed you,” he says.

“If you make me late for calculus I swear--”

"Meet me in the library, during mass?" Josh asked.

And Rusty nodded. "We really shouldn't be in here."

"I really missed you."

"We talked every day, all summer"

Josh hooked his fingers in the straps of Rusty's backpack, pulling him close again, kissing him softer this time. "Doesn't matter. Wasn't the same."

By some miracle, the both manage to make it to class on time.

After calculus, he steps out into the hall with a rush of other students. And when a hand closes on his upper arm he looks up, expecting to see Josh there again. But it's not.

Rusty doesn't put up a fight. And he feel's all eyes on him as the officer escorts him from the building.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I don't actually watch Major Crimes anymore. It's turned into misogynist queer baiting drivel. But I'd started this fic a while back and figured I would finish it so yeah. Hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
